[Marxism] Article by Chris Bambery (SWP) on the fight in Respect

[Lenin's Tomb]

On 10/31/07, Joaquin Bustelo <jbustelo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The counterposition of "Respect as a wider working class organization" to
> winning "Muslim votes" causes me concern, especially given the absence of
> any clear politics in the rest of the SWP's statements and articles on the
> dispute.


I think it's important to get this right: the argument is not that 'Muslim
votes' are counterposed to the 'wider working class': it is that organising
on the basis of community leaders and so on is of extremely limited
purchase, and for Respect to go forward we have to broaden our appeal.  Now,
you complain about "the absence of any clear politics" in the SWP's
statements, but the fact is that this is fundamentally what is driving this
dispute, as Glyn Robbins pointed out.



> Frankly, this comes across to my ear as possibly an expression of
> "more-socialist-than-thou" workerism, although it is impossible to say
> this
> with any certainty given the lack of a fuller political presentation by
> the
> SWP of what they view as being the political issues in dispute. So far
> they
> have made quite clear what they believe the *form* of the dispute is
> --Galloway & Co. trying to drive out the SWP-- but not what the politics
> behind it might be.


While we are more reluctant than others in Respect to leak information to
blogs and run spin campaigns behind various backs, we haven't neglected to
spell out the politics of this, as per the discussion of Shadwell: it isn't
simply that the axis of electoralism versus class politics reflects a deeper
politics - that *is* the political basis of this dispute.  It is a
fundamentally different conception of how to organise.