Is the SPGB an anarchist organization?

Well, they say it is, but I'm surprised that any Communist takes them at their word!

Yeah, I think they're usually referred to as the ruling class, which phrase I suppose is just a bit of a giveaway. Y'know, the 'ruling' bit. But perhaps Marx was talking out of his arse.

Errr..., yeah, that's right.

Airey Neave, Mountbatten, 'Clockwork Orange' in Northern Ireland, Column 88 within the British Army, Peter Wright and Spycatcher - and that's just in the 70s in the UK, after a few strikes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwork_Orange_(plot)

[edit]for some reason, the link above points to the film, but you can find the correct link from that page (it contains '_(plot)'), through 'disambiguation' [end edit]

Even more pertinent is Chile and Allende in 1973, where the Chilean armed forces took pride in being 'outside of politics', unlike the rest of the South American states, the military identified with the British Army's 'separation' from domestic politics.

I think we all know where, when and how that myth ended...

Do the SPGB have any plans to pull down the propaganda empire first? There is no chance at all of the SPGB gaining a mass popular vote until the media empire of Murdoch and others crumbles. Even a moderate socialist in Tony Benn was viciously attacked in the news media during the 70s, so I don't even want to imagine the abuse the radical left would receive if they started to gain any sort of foothold in parliament.

People in this country, as in most I assume, rely on newspapers for local, national and global information. Unless SPGB endorsed newspapers were able to flood every newsagent in Britain, overwhelming the power of the right-wing press, and even the soft left press, how could they -- in parliament no less! -- run on a platform of destroying the state?

I can't help but be reminded of the Islamists who initially thought they could rise to power through the parliamentary process in nations such as Algeria and Egypt. In the case of Algeria, as soon as it seemed likely that the Islamists would have the means to win a majority in the upcoming election, the elections were cancelled and the civil war begun.

Yeh, I know you can't compare Algeria to Britain, but what's stopping the British doing the same thing? If they cancel an election, citing the fact that the Socialists want to destroy the state and are a threat to freedom, what can be done?

Unless you're living in a fantasy world, you have to accept that there would be quite a lot of opposition to a Socialist party that proposed to destroy the state. This opposition would include the comfortable middle-classes, dwindling but still in existence, the upper classes, private enterprise, the political class, and a section of the working class that would still not have come around to the Socialist way of thinking (yes, they would exist).

Now, if the British government was to cancel the election, there would be a popular uprising, and that would lead to civil war, because the powerful would not sit back and they would have enough of the population on their side to launch a counter-attack.

It's a nice fantasy to think that you would have such a majority of the people on your side that the powerful would merely give in and flee, but it's a fantasy. On top of that, you would have to hope that while this was happening, every other major power was also occupied by the same problem, because otherwise, they would step in to crush the uprising.

And what about the armed forces? Or is it taken for granted that everyone in the armed forces would have come around to the Socialist way of thinking? Again, this is fantasy. If you preserve the tools of the state and it fights back, you're in a bad position, especially because you would have allowed the state to prepare for an uprising that they would have expected for a while if the working class had thrown their support behind the SPGB.

These people will not give you power. This isn't Weimar Germany with a PR voting system and elections every other week. You have to take it, and taking it can not be done by going through the parliamentary system. The mass, if they want change, will not wait for it; they will demand it straight away, and when that happens, a revolution will take place, not an election.

What does follow, then? That the socialist revolution and the socialist transformation will be achieved by a minority that has acquired a communist consciousness leading a majority which hasn't?

Given the declared aims and theory of the Bolshevik Party (that the working class is not capable of acquiring a communist consciousness and so has to be led by a minority that has been able to) I would have thought that to imagine that it was not a minority-led revolution that is counter-intuitive.

That the revolution is not an event but a process through which the working-class is transformed into an agent capable of replacing capitalism with socialism, a process which will involve among other things the acquiring of a majority 'socialist consciousness' near the end.

This is a laughably false account of Bolshevik theory and practice.

Is 'communist consciousness' on a mass scale likely to arise before, during or after a revolution?

This is the real issue at stake here between a 'materialist' and the SPGB's (and some anarchists) 'idealist' approach.

I've had this argument with the SPGB (and some anarchists) numerous times before on other threads and at meetings and been largely unable to get my point accross effectively to them, so here's another attempt in a different format if expressed a bit mechanically.

If we regard 'revolution' as a process rather than a single event then perhaps the point is that it may start with a minority of the working class (albeit a pretty large and significant minority) opposing the effects of capitalism in crisis through an international, self organised, class based social movement, (but not necessarily a fully conscious communist one), leading to a further breakdown of capitalism (exacerbation of capitalist crisis), which in turn creates the changed material conditions that allow the aformentioned social movement to expand and extend on a more conscious communist basis, in the process of seeking material changes to it's conditions by attacking the economic and social foundations of the system. (I submit this for the 'longest one sentence explanation' competition!).

To then advance from this stage towards the communist transformation of society as a whole the capitalist states must be nuetralised and eventually destroyed on a world scale - the social movement must have a political expression in clear opposition to the capitalist state.

The above scenario would, it seems to me, inevitably be drawn out both geographically and over a period of time (such a period might be regarded as very short in historical terms but long in terms of the actual humans involved). Most of that time it seems likely that the movement would involve a rapidly and ever expanding minority of the working class (and certainly of the world's population) but large enough to be effective.

In this sense 'communist consciousness' will arise through a practical escalation of class struggle 'in the course of revolution' and not before. It might be added that since this 'consciousness' is still one bearing the hallmarks of the struggle against capitalist social relations, that there must inevitably be a further level of consciousness that can only develop on the basis of growing up within the new human community of a post capitalist society, (a lot more could be said about the implications of that last point in terms of what we mean by a 'communist consciousness').

Does that make sense?

i think i understand Spikymike.
A current practical case in point might be Spain and Greece... minority demos were called, that led to the formation of massive assemblies. The question is, can the struggle be escalated just that little bit so that the reaction of the state is exposed and the workers false consciousness (and consequentially the assemblies' reformist goals) broken. Presumably indefinite general strikes are also a pre-requisite for the growth of this consciousness.

This is rather different from what you originally wrote:

This suggests that the working class can seize political power before a majority of them have acquired a communist consciousness. That's pure Bolshevism, I know, but nothing to do with how Marx and Engels saw things. In any event, how can the "working class" be said to seize power if a majority of them are not communist-minded? In these circumstances it will only be a self-appointed vanguard that will have seized power claiming to represent the working class and leading, as in Russia, to their dictatorship over the rest of the working class.

Further confirmation that you are a Bolshevik but please give us the Bolshevik account. On second thoughts, don't. We've all heard it too many times before and it's just political fiction.

i pose this question to Aftwydd , how do you anticipate change arising if you already dismiss the possibilty of workers being capable of understanding and desiring socialism/anarchism due to brain-washing and manipulation by the media? (And what made you so different and special that you aren't a victim of it?)

I think leaving the control and command centres of the coercive elements of the state in the hands of the state without even challenging the legitimacy places the workers in an even worse position.

And when does a mass become a mass?

And has not every revolution ended up with that masses demanding elections, In 1917 it was for the Constituent Assembly. As James Connolly said when the IWW jettisoned the political action clause , just try and stop workers from taking it.

Yes socialist ideas will overspill into the military. Or are you saying that a soldier is something less than other workers. Haven't you over-looked the sailors of 1918 Hamburg , or the Kronsdadt, or all the "Red Army" councils. Please, no psychological profiling that the mentality of a worker in uniform is fundamentally and qualitatively different for a whole host of other occupiations.

LB, the state does indeed represent the ruling dominant class, it's why workers strive for its control and why a revolution thats out to abolish classes also means the end of the state. If who controls parliament is empty rhetoric, then the ruling class spend a helluva lot of effort vying with other sections of the ruling class for control of it and making sure workers endorse them with their vote.

What happened in Chile is not relevant to our case that capitalism can be abolished by a democratically-organised socialist majority using Parliament. First, Allende and the People's Unity (Unidad Popular) alliance which supported him did not enjoy majority support (the election result was a 3-way split). Second, Allende did not stand for socialism but for state capitalism. Third, it was an attempt to improve things within the context of a single country on its own, which we have already said is not possible. Quite different conditions that will obtain on the eve of socialism - mass support for socialism throughout the world - which will be sufficient to deter latter-day Pinochet.
For every sucessful coup, how many failed ones? I already mentioned Chavez.

We are told that revolution is a process culminating in socialist consciousness, well - i can accept the rolling snowball theory that things will grow bigger and go faster - but excuse me for decrying other groups activities, but until that critical mass is reached, just what do they do that's so different from the SPGB...propaganda. And again please, don't refer me to claims of organising the workers, attempts to do so from the early days of traditional syndicalism to nowadays with SolFed and the IWW has not made any effective inroads, apart from propagandaising.

Zanthorus you can blow the trumpet about ICC interventions all you want, i can easily counter with historic examples of the participation of socialist party members, from the OBU in Canada to other strikes and union organising. I see no merit in chest baring and pissing contests since i think it can be conceded that the thin red line is very thin, indeed. I wish it wasn't the case because then it may give some clue to what group's tactics and methods is the better option for workers. The SPGB has one view and approach, those here have others, but, fact is, painful as it is, so far the working class has not been convinced by any of us. There exists to-day, so many factions claiming each to lay down the course necessary to be taken by the working class towards its emancipation and so far its all fallen on deaf ears.

The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity and importance of the worker keeping up the struggle over wages or to resisting cuts. There are some signs that union membership and general combativity are rising. And let's not forget that this is vital if our class is to develop some of the solidarity and self-confidence essential for the final abolition of wage slavery. We recognise the necessity of workers' solidarity in the class struggle against the capitalist class, and rejoice in every victory for the workers to assert their economic power. But to struggle for higher wages and better conditions is not revolutionary in any true sense of the word; and the essential weapons in this struggle are not inherently revolutionary either. It demands the revolutionising of the workers themselves. If there were more revolutionary workers in the unions—and in society generally—then the unions and the host of other community organisations would have a more revolutionary outlook,

This does not mean that we say workers should sit back and do nothing, the struggle over wages and conditions must go on. But it becomes clear that this is a secondary, defensive activity. The real struggle is to take the means of wealth production and distribution into the common ownership. Only by conscious and democratic action will such a socialist system of society be established. This means urging workers to want something more than what they once thought was "enough". The SPGB are accused of wanting "too much" because our aim is free access and common ownership. The task of the Socialist Party is to show workers that in fact it is a practical proposition. To transform this desire into an immediancy for the working class.

Participation in the class struggle does not automatically make workers class conscious. Militancy on the industrial field is just that and does not necessarily lead to political militancy, but ebbs and flows as labour market conditions change – and militants in the work-places can in no way count on their supporters on the political field. Yet one school of thought in the working class political movement sees strikes, particularly the unofficial wildcat kind, as bona fide rebellions, not only against the labour leaders, but against the capitalist system itself. This school views it as the beginnings of a real rank and file movement which will eventually result in the workers throwing out the union bureaucrats, taking over the factories, establishing workers' councils and ultimately a "workers society" based on these councils. We beg to differ.

Another school of thought ( mostly the Trots) believes industrial militancy can be used as a lever to push the workers along a political road, towards their "emancipation." How is this possible if the workers do not understand the political road, and are only engaging in economic struggles? The answer is the Leninist "leaders in-the-know" who will direct the workers. But these leaders lead the workers in the wrong direction, toward the wrong goals (nationalisation and state capitalism), as the workers find out to their sorrow.

The SPGB approach of education can point out to the workers that strikes arise out of the nature of capitalism, but that they are not the answer to the workers' problems. These economic struggles settle nothing decisively because in the end the workers remain wage slaves. It is the political act of the entire working class to eliminate the exploitative relations between workers and capitalists which can furnish a final solution and remove the chains. It's not the same as Leninist leadership, to point these things out, as someone seemed to believe earlier on this thread. It is educating workers to understand the nature of both capitalism and socialism, so that, with this understanding, the workers themselves can carry out the political act of their own emancipation. These struggles can be used as a means of educating workers to the real political struggle - socialism.

Prove to me a better way.

Spiky, that is quite a good summary, but then I'm already 'on side' with this perspective. We (all) need to consider various different scenarios of how revolution might occur. It will most likely be very complex and difficult, following a tortuous path. Rather than the simplistic linear logic of those formalistic idealists, who can only see it as something that only begins when 50% +1 of the working class is consciously in agreement with a revolutionary program put forth by this or that party or revolutionary union.

Spikeymike, as always you put your position succinctly but i am left with one query .

It still begs the question, though, doesn't it , how the struggle acquires this political expression of clear opposition to the capitalist state. How does it arise? Are you saying that there is a degree of automaticity in the process? No other possibilities for worker to take as a perceived solution such as fascism, or nationalism or religion?

The SPGB i think would argue that it is about engaging people with the idea of socialism, to talk about a revolution in social relations, and i think part of my earlier post indicated that if workers are already involved in actual struggle they would be more receptive to the idea more effective it would become. But not inevitable. There is nothing automatic about social change, it has to be struggled for.

Waslax -

See a previous reply to Spikeymike http://libcom.org/forums/news/anarchists-contest-2012-london-elections-21082010?page=3

The SPGB (and my own) idea of majority are not based on 50%+1 formula, yet another common misconception about our organisation's ideas that keeps getting repeated and it makes matters worse that its often done by those who have already had it explained to them, but prefer to go into denial about what they thought turning out not to be, and reluctant to give up a good put down, regardless of the accuracy of it.
(okay, okay, i will grant you that some individuals within the SPGB do take majority to be literal but it is not the party case)

A movement or organization having survived for very long is usually presented as a positive thing. But I think there is something to be said for an organization that has failed or been wiped out. Because at least there was either an admission by its members that it wasn't working out, or it was so caught up in actual revolutionary experience that the ruling class had to wipe it out. It's easy to survive when you keep yourself isolated from participating in the mean streets of class war.

Spikeymike always did dream of the socialist revolution starting from a dustman's strike in Manchester A lot of others do too. That's why they jump up and down every time there's a strike somewhere.

Spikymike should reply to this, but I will too. Agreed fully, ajj, there is no automaticity to this process. That is the councilist view, that it will just happen on its own. On the contrary, it is necessary for communists to organize themselves politically to defend within the movement's assemblies and councils their perspective, their strategy for revolution, for the liquidation of all capitalist states, and the global unification of the movement, to simultaneously abolish capitalism and initiate communisation.

Of course it is possible for fascist, nationalist, and religionist/communalist tendencies to develop within the assemblies and councils. All the more reason for there to be organizations of communists to counter them. I think we are agreed with the SPGB on this.

Yes, as you say, the state represents the 'ruling dominant class'. But if we also agree that workers want to 'control' or destroy the state by a revolution that abolishes classes, why would we 'strive to control' parliament? Parliament is not the state - it's only a minor part of it.

You're right again, the 'ruling class spend a helluva lot of effort vying with other sections of the ruling class for control of it', but it's because the ruling class isn't a monolithic body, and has various tendencies within it, that each 'section vies for control'. So, 'sections within the ruling class' may fight for control, but not other classes. It's not suited to our democratic purposes. Parliament is a class-based institution, not a neutral social organisation.

Again, you're correct in the details. But aren't you missing the wider point?

If Allende had had majority support, say 60%, was a sincere democratic Communist, and had a wider South American focus, would the Chilean ruling class have acted differently, and would the parliamentary workers' movement have survived the inevitable coup? Some army generals supported Allende anyway, but they were shot as class traitors by the tools of the rich.

It's the 'parliamentary strategy' that leads to defeat, not just 'premature' versions of it.

Right, so if 'quite different conditions will obtain', why persevere with the discredited 'parliamentary road'? 'Mass support for socialism throughout the world' will be expressed through international workers' councils, not several 'national parliaments'.

FWIW, aj, I've got more sympathy for your democratic approach than for that of Zanthorus!

Suffice to say, I am impressed how the SPGB keep to the ideas of Marx and Engels on this issue. Except the issue of using elections to achieve reforms under capitalism, their position is that of the founders of Marxism (as I show here). It is funny seeing self-proclaimed Marxists attacking the SPGB for these Marxist ideas and so implicitly accepting anarchist views on the state and "political action." Lenin's State and Revolution has a lot to answer for...

Well, I would say that the history of socialists using elections have proven the anarchist critique correct time and time again. In terms of building socialist awareness and movements, I think libertarian approaches of building economic and community organisations has been shown to be the better way. As expression of this is that we see Marxists embracing syndicalism across the world between 1900 and 1914.

Compared to the Bolshevik-fans, though, the SPGB have a firm understanding of what communism should be. In that, I consider them as closer to anarchism than the likes of the ICC.

ajj usefully cross references in post No 73 above with a link to an earlier thread debating the isue of 'elections' and 'majorities'. I would recomend also my follow up to that on the same thread as this deals with a number of points including my question as to what 'communist consciousness' is - it will save me and ajj some effort in repeating the arguments here.

There are also some other recent related library discussion threads around the notion of 'communisation' which address the relationship between 'objective' and 'subjective' factors in the potential for revolutionary change, but in partial answer to ajj I would of course argue, alongside Waslax, for the necessity of pro-revolutionary political organisation. Such organisations however have a multiple role bejond educational-propagandising for a future communist society - including an agitational role also.

I'm glad I got something accross to Harrison at least but they should question the idea of 'false consciousness' which implies there are those of us chosen pro-revolutionaries who are immune from such and are able to correct our lessor brethren - I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

alb offers only an insulting caricature of my viewpoint - he is capable of better but rather lazy!

Ah well, here goes but it while it was a caricature it wasn't meant to be insulting only amusing (sort of).

Anyway -- serious point -- I don't see that your spreading revolution scenario necessarily rules out taking part in elections as part of the process. In fact I would think that this would happen, whatever people might want to lay down in advance now. It seems so obvious. They offer an election. We take up the offer and kick (some or all of) them out, so weakening their position further. Why not?

Then why did they suggest that the Paris Commune was essentially a workers' government, the political form at last found in which to achieve the emancipation of labour? The majority of the Parisians were either Blanquists or Jacobin republicans.

Because the political power of the working-class does not equate to communism? Because the workers' can believe in, advocate and fight for their own collective dictatorship without necessarily yet believing that the course of events will lead that dictatorship eventually to transform property relations?

Since this isn't Russia in the early 20th century it's difficult to see how I could possibly be a 'Bolshevik', the latter being a term which only has currency with reference to debates on party membership and the activity of revolutionaries in the provisional revolutionary government in the then-extant Russian situation. Further, if opposing the idea that the Russian revolution was a minority led coup makes one a 'Bolshevik' then a good number of revisionist academic historians beggining with Rabinowitch's work on the Bolsehvik party are apparently themselves Bolsheviks. In fact since even as late as his book 'Workers' Councils' Pannekoek recognised the Bolshevik party as the organic leadership of the proletarian movement in 1917 that would make Pannekoek a 'Bolshevik' as well.

If you want to read the 'Bolshevik account' you can read any number of works by Soviet or Trotskyist historians. I have no interest in legitimising the 'Bolshevik account' of the Russian revolution. I do think any analysis of the Russian revolution has to begin from the simple historical fact that in 1917 the Bolsheviks were, far from a secretive cabal of 'proffessional revolutionaries' an open mass party which increasingly enjoyed popular support from the working-class.

Spikeymike in his post [url=http://libcom.org/forums/news/anarchists-contest-2012-london-elections-21082010?page=3 ]on the other thread[/url]

His rhetorical question i think is the most important point for all of us to consider on this Libcom Forum and in our respective organisations. Plenty for us to think about and plenty for us to hopefully agree upon.

Be nice if there existed in every city and town a Workers Open Forum that once existed in Glasgow.

Fully agree with that. Who knows, the way things are going, with things such as the 'Toma la Plaza' movement in Spain, and spreading to various other European countries, where a big concern is for people to stay together in a public square so they can discuss at length (as so many are unemployed now) their situation and what to do about it, such a development as you suggest may not be so far off.

Good point, but it was the least they could say in the face of its brutal suppression by the French government. Marx in fact advised against the uprising (he thought they'd be better consolidating the newly established republic and working within it) and later, in a private letter, said that it wasn't socialist. What he was saying here is that the political form within which to fight out the class struggle to a successful conclusion, was an ultra-democratic regime (universal suffrage, full freedom of speech, right of recall, etc). Hence the importance of political democracy to the working class.

I'd be a lot less sure about this one. What does it mean and what does it imply? Is there a distinction between a "proletarian revolution" (which establishes working class political power) and a "socialist revolution" (which establishes communism)? What is the form of working class political power? Can it be anything other than a full-scale democracy? In any event, it would imply a period of working class government of capitalism, but can capitalism be run in the interests of the workers even by workers? I would have thought that the experience of various Labour and Social Democratic governments since 1917 (there hadn't been any before except in one Australian State) has shown this not to be the case. As indeed did what happened in Russia under the Bolshevik government.

Yes, but that's my point. The Bolshevik party were leaders. They may have been socialists, but their following was not built on this basis. I think Pannekoek attributed the state capitalist road they took to the fact that the mass of the workers (including most of their followers) were not ready for socialism.

I think the historical record shows that the Bolshevik party was something in between the two, ie that it was a body of professional revolutionaries whose leaders did decide things in secret and that did enjoy a wide (but by no means unanimous) degree of working-class support. And it was the Bolshevik party that seized governmental control in November 1917, even if under the guise of establishing a "soviet" government. In fact, a genuine soviet government would have been an equivalent of the Paris Commune, but what the Bolsheviks established was not an ultra-democratic regime but the dictatorship of their party, as their Menshevik and anarchist critics were quick to point out (before they were silenced).

And failed to mention that Proudhon raised these ideas in... 1848! Indeed, if you compare Marx's description of the Commune to Proudhon's election Manifesto of November 1848 you discover a distinct similarity -- as I did in The Paris Commune and the Kronstadt Uprising recently.

This is hardly surprising, given that the Commune's Declaration to the French People was written by a follower of Proudhon!

I discuss this in the introduction of Property is Theft! as well as my article in ASR The Paris Commune, Marxism and Anarchism.

In short, the reason why Marx sounds particularly libertarian in The Civil War in France is because he was describing a revolt in which libertarians played a significant role.

alb asks a question above and whilst I think I have made a reasonable attempt to answer that before on related threads, since I accused him of posting lazy one liners I will have to make at least one more effort here:

Since I cannot forecast the future I cannot say that in the scenario I posted here earlier that some groups of workers (perhaps influenced by the kind of backward ideology of such as the SPGB!) wouldn't engage in electoral activity and gain some more widespread support than at present. It might be that such activity would amount to little more than an irrelevant sideshow.
It might, more likely, be however that such activity would amount to a much more dangerous diversion to the main thrust of workers seeking to advance their self organisation and self expression as an independent force.

This is because the beginnings of the movement I tried to describe, (based, I might add, on historical as well as some current day experience), whilst large, would inevitably still be a minority movement. To extend (accross professional, local and national boundaries) and deepen, such a movement would have to contend with and reject the democratic and representative claims of established capitalist institutions - first and foremost being those of the central, regional and local states, but also including other institutions such as the trade unions and other permanently established institutions integrated into the management of capitalism (various NGO's etc).

We can see this problem in minitiature when groups of workers go on strike or occupy facilities etc and are regularly told that they are unrepresentative and undemocratic in their actions by both government bodies and trade unions amongst others. The battle lines are often expressed in terms of 'who is the more representative in practice' or the 'special or extentuating circumstances' etc but this is just a mystification which pro-revolutionaries must work hard to overcome in the process of their practical involvement in such struggles.

It was not so much libertarians playing a key role within the Commune, I believe that's been exaggerated. it's the fact that the base organs of the Commune- the clubs and associations- were PROFOUNDLY libertarian, as opposed to the central organs peopled by vacillating, vain and inept people. This is superbly described in the wonderful The Paradise of Association by Martin Phillip Johnson.

I think we can quote Marx from the Manifesto in regard minorities and majorities.

"Pushes forward" i think is the key phrase...Marx didn't say lead forward.

After i posted about a workers forum I was minded, Mike, that you once told me sometime during the mid-90s, at a Glasgow anarchist event, when there was widespread strive in the postal and rail industries and in Edinburgh union and political activists created what was called the Workers Liason Committee ( under the Clydeworkers slogan of 'We will support the officials just so long as they rightly represent the workers, but we will act immediately they misrepresent them'), you warned me that indeed such things will happen , workers and different groups could coalesce around a struggle but once it was over , the committee would dissipate and disappear. You were proved correct. Its made me think activism cannot flourish in a vacuum of general passivity, regardless of the commitment of any hard-core militants involved. It just won't take root and grow.

But what to do in the meantime since waiting for that "revolutionary moment" isn't really an option and we cannot artificially create them ??

As opposed to not mentioned at all by Marx? At least Engels admitted 20 years later that the minority where followers of Proudhon -- said minority being the one's whose ideas are expressed in the Commune's declaration and other public statements (as mentioned by Marx, but not quoted) as well as opposing the Blanquist/Jacobin attempts to create a "revolutionary" dictatorship.

Again, as argued by Proudhon during the 1848 revolution. To quote the introduction of "Property is Theft!":

Marx in 1850 was denouncing federalism, going on about the need for centralisation, top-down imposition of change and so on. In 1871, he basically admitted that the anarchists had been right all along...

The influence of libertarians in the Commune was significant. Unsurprisingly, as they were the leading members of the IWMA in Paris as well as being a large minority of Council Members. As I said, the public statements by the Commune used by Marx were written by libertarians. Not that Marx said so, of course. There is a clear correlation between the ideas raised by Proudhon (particularly in 1848) and those applied by his followers in 1871. I'm surprised this is being questioned.

Yes, as Kropotkin argued in Revolutionary Government and elsewhere the Commune had to break with the state internally as well. Federation within the commune was necessary alongside federalism externally.

Good book. I use it when I discuss the lessons anarchists drew from the Commune in terms of the impotency of revolutionary government in my essay The Paris Commune, Marxism and Anarchism.

Proudhon. Election Manifesto! People here should read it as it seems to be a good summary of Proudhon's economic and social views, but they will be surprised by its conclusion. Not abstain ... but vote for the candidate of the extreme left!

Less surprisingly (in fact not surprisingly at all) Marx and Engels also urged a vote for Raspail.

Proudhon's views on the political structure are also un-anarchist (but still good): universal suffrage, imperative mandate, right of recall, etc.

His economic views on the other hand are odd, reflecting the fact that he was not a communist but a currency reformer (not to say currency crank) and also his view (still entertained in some circles today) that workers cooperatives would be able to outcompete capitalist enterprises and eventually gradually bring about a free market economy of competing coops:

Marx never said any similar to that.

Would the SPGB bother to attend? The Midlands Discussion Forum has been in existence for 11 years (but perhaps not much longer, due to lack of interest), discussing the theory and practice of the workers' movement, and the SPGB have sent people I think twice. And someone who was sympathetic to them came I believe 5 times. The SPGB even have a branch in Birmingham, the city where we have been meeting for the past 3 years or so, and we've not seen them since 2003.

Have the SPGB been attending the Manchester Class Struggle Forum? I believe that group is also struggling due to lack of interest and may soon cease meeting. Perhaps Spikeymike might let us know what the current situation is.

Did the SPGB go to the Exeter Discussion Circle meetings? That discussion group is no longer in existence I believe, the 3 or 4 people who used to regularly attend finding it too difficult to sustain on their own.

So, yes, it would be good if there were such groups in many places but they won't happen if people don't go to them.

Do the anarchists/council communists go to the West Lothian or Edinburgh socialist discussion meetings hosted by the SPGB that is even held at the ACE premises?

I can't speak for other members of the SPGB (were they invited? were they welcome? were they aware of the open format of the meetings that permits them an input? did they have time as individuals to go or were they just lazy ), and I can't speak of the value of the discussion forums you mention (since i haven't attended any) but i will accept your word that they were worthwhile ventures. i will pose the question on our discussion list and it will be interesting to read the reasons if anyone bothers to respond that is (as members we aren't uncritical of our own organisation).

Talking once to an older Glasgow branch member, he used to be taken along to the Glasgow Open Forum by his father as a child just after the war, and the branch and individuals did get involved in the polemic debates between the organisations but they seemed to be a tad formal as was the norm for that period (and would that be a problem to organising today?).

But your point is a valid one - SPGB members should be involved in discussions and debates, particularly with those in our small sector, but the demise of those forums , i don't think it is necessarily the fault of the SPGB for not attending !! (some would say that that is a blessing in disguise - joke)

There must be something more to it. Why do you think there was a dearth of participants in these forums, Slothjabber, and why they eventually (or are presently in the process) of fizzling out?