Platformism

Yes but I'm saying that _because_ I'm in favour of it! It's exactly anarcho-Trotskyist - that's what's good about it!

It's not a facile argument to state the obvious. What's facile is the rejection of organisation implied by a rejection of the platform because effectively it calls for organisation and 'front groups'.

Oh come on I didn't call HSG platformist at all.

From what I've heard from one libcom contributor in HSG they sometimes get the likes of old labour people coming along their meetings.

What I said was (and I think you'd do well to watch your wording in relation to things you're claiming I've said John - I really don't want to piss anyone in any organisations off by pidgeonholing them, speaking for them, or misapplying labels to them, particularly when I didn't actually cock up in that way personally):-

But to your point:-

The platform is a historical document which doesn't actually say very much beyond tweny pages of banging on about the proletariat and that. It doesn't lay out much organisationally beyond calling for a general union of anarchists who have tactical and theoretical unity. I can interperate it however I like.

Any practical implactions of this are therefore bound to be inferences, and the inferences that some folks tend to draw to critique the platform as a vanguardist neo-Trotskyist document tend to be the same inferences I draw to praise the platform. None of this is actually there in the platform, it's just what organisationally it would mean if you were to put it into practice in a serious revolutionary strategy.

My use of the phrase 'anarcho-Trotskyist' was a little arrogant - I'm sorry - sometimes I ideolecticize specific terminologies which seem logical to me and then insist on using them knowing full well it'll push people's buttons, but that it will in my view be a better terminology. it does lead to lots of logomachies tho.

I'll respond tomorrow -or perhaps at the lastest the day after - with a more cogent, choate and coherent theoretical treatise on what I mean by some of the phraseology I've been using.

Solidarity,

Nick

Sort of - I'm fully well aware that the platform doesn't say any of the stuff I'm saying, but I don't think it matters coz I'm talking about an -ism not an outdated poliical document written by some dead guys over 80 years ago.

I'm sorry to have wound you up John. I'll get back to this more fully tomorrow, have to sleep now.

Speak for yourself gurrier. In Glasgow we are in a position to start changing things in housing. Some of us are involved in tenants and residents groups in local areas, as well as the Save Our Homes campaign and are involved in trying to get together a federation of tenants groups

In Haringey or Hackney comrades are sbsolutely in a position to affect matters of housing, in Haringey comrades actually are involved in shaping the nature of housing there.

Be careful with your defeatist 'we's.

Hundreds of poor vulnerable people die each year in Scotland because they can't afford to heat their homes.

80,000 people are homeless, in Scotland.

Many hundreds of thousands of people suffer ill-health and premature death, in Scotland alone, as a result of shockingly bad slum housing.

Housing is one of the biggest factors in any appraisal of public health and one of the easiest things to change to improve people's lifespans and quality of life (average life expectancy in most of Glasgow's poor areas is around 60, or less, this is not all attributable to the usual scapegoats of lifestyle, and all of the other hackneyed "the working class is stupid" discourses. Much, if not most, of this is due to poor housing.).

It might not be sexy. It might not be what motivates left-wing people. But it fucking should be.

Not to devalue gay and lesbian issues but they have to play second fiddle compared with housing. It is not as if we are facing an epidemic of gays and lesbians being killed. We are absolutely seeing that with poor people's housing sending them to an early grave. Just as we are absolutely seeing the end of social housing and the repeal of the housing benefit system; what do you think this will lead to for the working class as a whole?

As afraser said - "priorities man."

Yes but what you said was "we're not likely to be in any position to do anything about housing for a good while", you didn't say 'we're not likely to be in a position to implement macro-economic housing decisions for a good while'. It is patently obvious that we are not the British state. However we should be absolutely serious about eroding its power and for you to say "we are not in X position to do Y for a good while" when some of us are absolutely trying to build that position comes across as defeatist adn I would suggest to you that in some place comrades absolutely are impacting on macroecomic housing policies. It's this 'we can't change anything' attitude that fuels the activitst ghetto.

I tend to think this as well. I fail to see how saying that a socialist organisation should focus on bread and butter issues first equates to workerism. I mean should we have detailed positions on every oppressed group in society before we touch on housing, umemployment and low wages? Hold on wait - what's our position on 'the other campaign'?

Naw I'm sorry mate we don't really know how we feel about your hoose bein torn doun, your housing benefit being axed and the fact that there's nae jobs and your area's overrun with junkies and hoose-brekkers because we're too busy talking about whether we feel we should support your decision to have a civil partnership with your same-sex partner?

I think we need a position paper on this.

In my view Council Housing - altho I'm not ideologically driven, it's just that Housing Associations aren't clearly the enemy to people yet in the way council landlords are.

Reverse the right to buy. Then install tenant management co-operatives and keep a federation of residents organisations to push for things - that's your revolutionary organisation.

A mixture of pushing for stock transfers to community councils coupled with stock transfers to tenant management co-operatives to set up community land trusts - whichever is the more doable in each area - appears to be the best way forward.

This should be done while fighting to install democratic condominiums in areas of owner occupancy through residents groups and effectively fighting to turn private rental accomodation into social housing by forcing through secure tenancies.

Where council and Housing Association authority exists we should force them to sign service level agreements with residents groups through a residents federation and enshrine in the public consciousness 'the right' to rent strike and council tax strike if these agreements are broken (and obviously pushing for them thereafter at every conceivable opportunity), as well as making boards of housing authorities elected by tenants and residents, with (in the case of housing associations) co-optees from community councils.

We should also be pushing that community councils carry out all factoring in their districts, as well as the obvious (making community councils absolutely participatory, after we've taken them over).

We should basically do anything that gives us and the people power and removes power from the authorities.

One comrade who posts here has a slight feeling of being pro-second stage transfer because they reckon it'll make the task of taking the housing authority on somewhat easier.

I tended to be against that (and still am because of the carte blanche given to demolitions) in Glasgow because of the multiple lists thing. However it seems that's what the common housing register is all about.

I have a lot of questions and doubts at the moment. and I know other comrades have the same problem. I think it's dead important then to have a serious discussion (with position papers) about what is to be pushed for.

I think that is really mechanistic and determinist. _Obviously_ I think that it is important to defend people's rights to be or do what they want so long as it does not infringe upon other people's rights, and obviously that includes gays and lesbians. That's very important for a socialist, however as I've said it's not as if gays and lesbians are being killed in huge numbers in the way that poverty and poor housing kills people. I do believe in doing what I can (when gays and lesbians ask for solidarity) tho but it's not a class issue unless it's being used to divide the class.

I do think it's an important point to make that sexism, racism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry are not inherent to capitalism, nor are they 'put there' by capitalism. People have been bad to each other for millenia and mislearned, sociological phenomena have been there since time began, they might have been used by the ruling class to divide people but that's not WHY they are there.