Secretarians of the World Unite!

I thought I'd use a second post to elaborate a little on what I intend to use the blog for.

It does seem to me that comrades in the SPEW and SWP, in particular, are taught to look at smaller groups as 'wreckers' (to use a Crowite term!) i.e. irrelevent mosquitos irritating the 'real', 'realist' socialists. Well, much as in real life I tend to be fairly conciliatory in my tone when talking to people with that mindset, here on this blog is the place for me and anyone else who fancies it to vent some serious spleen and be proud to be 'secretarian' wreckers! Let's fucking wreck the cosy consensus mentality within left groups that allows basic marxist principles to be roasted on the bonfire in the name of cheap votes or recruitment tactics.

It's even worse when they use 'unity' as the excuse. Like most people, I'm in favour of motherhood, apple pie and left unity. But unity is not apolitical. You have to unite based on some kind of principle. In No2EU, the SPEW united behind the principles of the Stalinist Communist Party of Britain (CPB) i.e. dodgy 'left' nationalism. Having set that precendent I am highly doubtful that any General Election platform this rotten bloc comes up with will be any better, although this is what desperate SPEWers are trying to maintain.

My position is that the marxist left desperately needs unity. Maybe not so desperately that I am prepared to drop all my industrial/direct class struggle work to write articles about it (i.e. I am not a member of the CPGB) but pretty desperately nonetheless. The unity I'm talking about would involve not just some shitty federalist structure a la the old Socialist Alliance (although even that would be a big step forward) but something where we hold a series of debates, conferences and conduct serious polemics in our newspapers and thrash out a programme which the majority of us could sign up to. There will always be some who choose not to take part, but once rank and filers have the opportunity to witness genuine cross-sect free debate on the big issues, I believe wide consensus on many issues would take place.

What might stop that happening is if most rank and filers have been so utterly starved of education that they are left literally unable to think for themselves when presented with such an opportunity. I believe most of the poor slobs I'll be referring to on this blog will actually be activists who crave education and will be willing to hear the good news of marxism if they are actually told about it. For this reason, I will be using the blog not just to ridicule the uneducated but also to comment a bit on how I am educating myself- recommending or reviewing texts or events that might be helpful for others. At least then I cannot be accused of offering nothing positive alongside my wrecking secretarian ways!

'If it is sectarianism, then all of Marxism is only sectarianism, since it is the doctrine of the class struggle and not of class collaboration.'
Trotsky defending his criticisms of Nin in the Spanish Civil War, 1936